Julius Baer has signed a deal with London-based advisory firm Alpima for a customized platform that uses data science and technology to build portfolios and run money. 

Re-think, Re-tool

The Swiss bank is a «significant» new client for the firm that already provides similar services to more than twenty asset and wealth managers, including some of the largest in Europe.

Alpima CEO Pierre Mendelsohn described the platform to finews.com as «a horizontal layer that connects research, production and sales within an organization» and one that has been «designed for the front office by the front office». Spearheaded by ex-bankers, Alpima is targeted at «an entire industry that needs re-thinking and re-tooling,» says Mendelsohn. 

Ground-Breaking 

Evie Kostakis, deputy head of investment management at Julius Baer called the platform «ground-breaking» and said «it offers the adaptability and agility we need to serve our clients in the competitive, fast-changing landscape we operate in». Mendelsohn says Alpima will help Julius Baer  «future-proof and digitize their business and set a new standard for the industry».

Alpima claims to help productivity at client firms by cutting in half the average time spent by a team that currently relies on some element of manual process. It can also help a firm demonstrate to clients what impact individual investment decisions will have on portfolios without losing any of the advantages of scale – the correlation of a portfolio to gold prices, for example, can be run as an automatic query rather than one that uses expensive man hours. Similarly, centralized decisions –  made by the CIO for example – can be effected seamlessly without relying on manual implementation.